Authors Electric

At the end of last year, a birthday gift – the DVD of “Roman Polanski’s Film of MACBETH”, as the cover has it. There, too, on the cover, a robed, crowned, bearded and enthroned Martin Shaw, holding what could be a shield, or a mirror, or a scrying glass, turned outwards and away from  himself. Of course, in the film, Martin Shaw plays Banquo, not Macbeth. I assumed that Shaw was on the cover because his fame nowadays is greater than that of the late Jon Finch, who did play Macbeth in this film, and that this was an attempt to shift DVD copies to Shaw fans. Google suggests otherwise, though, with the consensus seeming to be that the company which produced the DVD had mistaken Shaw for Finch/Macbeth, and put him on the cover by accident, lifting the first still image they found on a scan, of an actor wearing a crown in the film. I watched the DVD just after Christmas, with the friend who had bought me it. We watched it in Inverness where it seems the real h...

When I was 14, in Scotland back in 1982, my two favourite novels were The Stand, by Stephen King, and Ghost Story, by Peter Straub. One summer night in 1982, in Inverness (small city in Scottish Highlands), I was introduced to a guy three years older than me, who it would have seemed I ought to have nothing in common with. We ended up being left alone together in a car, by the friend who had introduced us, and a heavy silence fell in the air, only to be broken when somehow the subject of reading came up, and we both found we had read The Stand, and Ghost Story. Neither of us had ever met anyone else who had read both those novels before. I knew very few people back then who read books at all. Thus began a friendship which lasted for the next 15 years or so… A couple of years later, in 1984, it so happened that Stephen King and Peter Straub teamed up, to co-write a novel, called The Talisman, which I loved. (“ WOLF!! Right here and Now!! ”) I loaned...

by Bill Kirton (I know I used this book cover on last month's blog but it's relevant this time, too. Anyway, I've also messed around with the image and added the official accolades it's gathered - spoiling Sessha Batto's lovely cover design in the process. Sorry Sessha. It's another of my feeble attempts at marketing.) Sometimes, in workshops or talks to writing groups, I remind people that you don’t ‘write a novel’, you write some words, then some more words, then some more – and eventually there’s a substantial pile of paper on the desk and you realise you actually have written something that’s a lot longer than a short story. I then add that, although that makes it sound easy and unstructured, it’s not, and I have great respect for the form and conventions of novel-writing. But it was a realisation that dawned on me as I was writing my first novel, which, after several years and many rewrites, became The Sparrow Conundrum . It’s also a reminder of th...

Welcome to A VERY BRITISH BLOG TOUR 2013 – a collection of blogs, books and authors who are surprisingly very British. John A. A. Logan invites you to take part in ‘A Very British Blog’ by visiting and supporting the websites of authors involved in the tour and who are dedicated to turning out some of the finest books available in Britain today. Author Christine Miller invited me to take part in this great initiative, and she was invited in turn by author Clive Eaton Each author named at the bottom of the page has been asked the same questions but the answers will obviously all be different. You simply click on the author’s name at the bottom of the page to see how they have answered the same question. By the way, we British have certain conventions, traditions and procedures that are expected. There is a dress code in the reading of this British blog and you are expected to comply with it. © Gluke |  Dreamstime Stock Photos  &  Stock Fr...

I hadn’t done a public reading in ten years, not since I was invited to read out my short story, Bringing Something Back, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2002. That had been fifteen minutes standing at a microphone in a tent called a Yurt. Including expenses, £155 for fifteen minutes “work”. Not bad, I had thought then. The wine had been free that day too, of course. Even a fish and chip supper paid for by Ron Turnbull, then-editor of Edinburgh Review. And here I was, ten years later, on Friday 28 th September 2012, due to attend a meeting of the Alliance of Independent Authors in Inverness, where I had been invited to do a wee reading from my novel, The Survival of Thomas Ford. 7.30pm at the Glen Mhor Hotel. I Googled it. Nice old building, slate roof, not bad stonework. I hadn’t been there for many years.                         ...